Henry didn’t really want to answer the door, but when he looked through the peephole, it was the mailman. He held out a cease-and-desist order, for which he needed a signature. There was no reason to debate or refuse. He signed where indicated and called the number his editor gave him, neatly passing the problem down the line.
It didn’t matter. They told him not to worry. They’d take care of it, and he should just concentrate on writing, first the initial article, and then the expansion, and then the book. It was all lined up, and they’d be getting him a list of deadlines later today, for blog posts and interviews and that kind of thing. Oh, and the money. Of course he’d be getting the money. Far more than a reimbursement for the month at Loon Lake.
They didn’t even mind his social media post. They were lawyers, and probably should have, but worked for people who made money off clicks, so they got it. He’d just upped his own worth, putting enough out there to let everyone know where the golden goose could be direct-messaged. All offers, be they for interviews or posts or anything else, were forwarded to his new team. He now had a team of more than just lawyers, thank you very much. He was a hot commodity, and he wasn’t going to cool down anytime soon.
Henry sat back down at his laptop and reviewed what he’d written there. No confession to recording anything, and no direct quotes, at least not in this first piece. That was easy to agree to, and the lawyers figured they’d settle with the Meyers early on, maybe by putting some pressure on them. Hey, they were the ones who let both a couple of bank robbers and a freelance reporter into their little haven. At this point they figured Henry’s presence and recordings wouldn’t be much of an issue, because of everything else that happened, so they’d push buttons until they found a tender spot, and bam. Feel free to continue with the book deal.
Okay but he hoped that the working title Henry: Two Weeks at Loon Lake was just a working title. There had to be something better. His real name would be there as the author, but it just wasn’t sexy enough. It put Loon Lake to the end of the title, for one thing, and depended on the whole Henry part being at the forefront when the book came out. Not that he wanted it named after Percy and Mary, but still.
For now he turned back to “Hasty Retreat: The Twenty-First Century Bonnie and Clyde” and reviewed what he’d written about his conversation—practically his only conversation—with Percy. Henry called him Percy, because that was something new he could offer, and readers would eat it up: Percy and Mary Shelley and their parallels to the real-life Ferguson and Sype. There was nothing better than speculation to spark a million page views, and it would give people something to argue over in the comments.
Plus it wasn’t even all that controversial. All he was sharing was the random names assigned to the robbers by the Meyers, who gave all their clients literary names. His own, Henry of Longfellow cabin, came first, and they were the only three he was mentioning in this piece. That was part of the carefully scaffolded reveal of information, and it allowed his lawyers to argue that he was only exposing details about himself and two people who’d already been connected to Loon Lake, and who were looking guiltier by the hour.
It wouldn’t get published until everyone who needed to had a chance to look at it, and approve it, and made changes or delete things if they thought he crossed the line, but Henry was pleased. As a first account, it gave just enough for verisimilitude while hinting that there was oh so much more.
And at this point he was damn grateful that he hadn’t told anyone why he was going to Loon Lake, or anyone but his brother that he was going in the first place. Sure, he told that police officer up in Nowhere Harbor, BFE, that he had evidence, but who cared about Aaron Gladieux anymore? His daughter worked there, yawn. It didn’t matter if she’d had a fling with Truman or Jonathan or even Edgar. That wasn’t news. Seriously, even Edgar wasn’t news.
Henry was news. His notifications told him he was news. Once they reached three digits, they just turned into a red dot, no numbers, and it didn’t matter how often he checked. His freaking tweets or whatever the fuck you were supposed to call them now were news, quoted in one article after another as those same people tried desperately to get a hold of him. That was why he was sitting here and writing his first three thousand words, to be submitted soon and published shortly after that. His stock was on its way up.
Cold Comfort: Monday, July 15, 2024 – Agatha (1), coming September 4
Rebecca Frost 
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